Catalogue

Folk artistic handicraft

Siberian carpet factory. Starting with XVIII century, craft and trades were common for Ishim (Korkina sloboda). Out of all the productions, handicraft weaving was and is thriving the most. Much of it is owed to abundant presence of raw materials (fleece, flax, natural dyes) and a number of bearers of traditions handing down the secrets of their mastery from generation to generation.

By the beginning of ХХ century first weavers workshop had appeared in Ishim, later on, in 1958, Ilyich's workmen's cooperative association came into play which subsequently was reorganized into Ishim carpet factory employing over 700 masters. One of the first major commissions was a government order for red carpets which have been adorning the hallways of the Moscow Kremlin ever since.

As a result of a financial crisis of 1998 the factory became bankrupt. Last carpets were handed over to the museum to keep the memories of the mastery of fellow Ishim weaving masters. The 2001 year marked a new stage as the factory had been revived as a limited liability corporation "Siberian carpet factory". Once again the team of highly skilled masters got back to work.

Currently Siberian carpet factory is the only factory to use traditional Siberian terry weaving technique, known from the beginning of the XVIII century. One of the main differences of the technique is that it enables us to weave as long carpets as the customer wishes, which also insures lack of seams.
(it is not uncommon for a carpet to be as long as 60 meters). Moreover, this technique allows us to use up to 100 colors (while machinery techniques are limited to 12 colors). The whole process is manual. The primary product is fleece and the base is a cotton thread. Pile carpets are woven using vertical machines pileless are made with horizontal machines.